Iran Pledges to Offer New Proposals in Nuclear Talks With Europe
(Associated Press)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/internat...ast/25iran.html

Thursday, August 25
Iran will soon offer new proposals for negotiations with Europe over its nuclear program, its president said Wednesday. The Bush administration responded that the European diplomatic process "still has legs."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said that he had instructed the Supreme National Security Council to write new proposals on Iran's uranium enrichment program. "Iran will soon offer proposals about the cycle of nuclear fuel for peaceful use of nuclear energy," he said on state-run television.

Iran Calls for Other Countries to Join Nuclear Talks
(Associated Press)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/internatio...an-Nuclear.html

Thursday, August 25
Iran's top nuclear negotiator called for more countries to join the three European states engaged in talks about Tehran's contentious nuclear program, state-run television reported Thursday.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said he welcomed negotiations with all members of the board of governors of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency plus countries from the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement. ''There is a serious question in Iran that asks why nuclear negotiations should be limited to just three European countries,'' state TV quoted Larijani as saying.

Iran Wants to Include Sympathetic States in Nuke Talks CNSNews.com
Amid signs that the row over Iran's nuclear program may -- again -- be coming to a head, Tehran has launched a bid to draw presumably more sympathetic states into talks that up to now have been limited to Iran and three European nations. The move comes as the European trio of Britain, France and Germany (the E.U.-3) are signaling a firmer stance against Iran after the Islamic Republic rejected an offer of incentives in exchange for giving up sensitive nuclear workIran also resumed uranium conversion -- one step before enriching -- at a plant in the central city of Isfahan, activity it had earlier suspended under an agreement with the E.U.-3. Enriched uranium can be used both in civilian energy reactors and for making atom bombs. A recent meeting of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board expressed concern about the resumed activity and asked the nuclear watchdog's head, Mohamed ElBaradei, to deliver a comprehensive report on the matter by Sept. 3. Talks between Iran and the E.U.-3 have meanwhile been suspended, and diplomats in Vienna are quoted as saying the Europeans are preparing to call for an emergency IAEA meeting after Sept. 3 in a bid to put the Iranian situation before the U.N. Security Council. Suspecting the Iranians are pursuing a nuclear weapons program, Washington has long favored referral to the Security Council -- a step that could lead to sanctions -- but agreed to back the E.U.-3 negotiating effort. Opposition to firm action has come from China and Russia, as well as a bloc of mostly developing countries that are members of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and together make up one-third of the IAEA board. Iran on Thursday demanded that the negotiation process to be thrown open to more countries. Leading the call was Ali Larijani, the nuclear negotiator newly appointed by incoming President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a mandate to "safeguard the Islamic revolution." Exiled opponents of the Iranian regime describe Larijani, whose official title is secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, as a hardliner. He is due to meet with ElBaradei on Friday. The new negotiator told Iranian state television that public opinion and "the elite" in Iran wanted to know why the talks should be limited to just the three European countries. Larijani said some countries, including members of the IAEA board and even some European states, had been questioning the basis of the selection of Britain, France and Germany as the negotiating partners. Iran would welcome bringing in other countries that are represented on the IAEA board, as well as members of the NAM, he said. The new Iranian strategy was also seen in an editorial on the state broadcaster, which said that by themselves, Britain, France and Germany were not capable of concluding a deal with Iran. Tehran's disenchantment with the E.U.-3 is evidently linked to its view that the Europeans are too closely aligned with the United States. Iran's parliamentary speaker, Gholam-ali Haddad Adel, implicitly called the independence of the E.U.-3 into question. "Our expectation is that Europeans should not toe Washington's line, which does not have a logical behavior towards Tehran," he said Thursday. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi separately told the IRNA news agency that the European trio's performance showed they were following "other objectives" in their dealings with Iran. But in Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the call as a "typical tactic" to divert attention away from the matter at hand. "They will come up with proposals like this to try to change the subject from what the real issue is, and that is their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons," he said. The U.S. urged Iran to resume discussions with the E.U.-3 and to accept the deal recently offered. Iran concealed its activities from the IAEA for two decades, until a critic of the regime exposed them in 2002. Tehran denies Western allegations that its nuclear program is a cover for a military program, saying it is designed purely for generating electricity and as such is within Iran's legal rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But U.S. suspicions remain strong. Washington's envoy to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, told the Voice of America that despite Iran's protestations, its activities were not consistent with a civilian nuclear power program. "Why are they hiding so many of their facilities? Why do they build their enrichment facilities underground and disguise them as an agricultural complex? Why is the military associated with many of these programs?" he asked. "These are real questions the IAEA has asked and that we ask and Iran refuses to give answers to." Iran's main exiled opposition, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, predicted at a Brussels press conference Thursday that Tehran could have a nuclear weapon by 2007. The NCRI, which in the past made public information about the nuclear program that proved credible, is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department.
US, EU agree not to seek emergency UN meeting over Iran Forbes
Iran in talks with UN nuclear watchdog Reuters.uk
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http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=7102

August 26, 2005
Iran's Growing Sway in Iraq Defies Neocons' Logic

by Jim Lobe
Anyone who still believes that the U.S. neoconservatives who led the drive to war in Iraq are diabolically clever geo-strategic masterminds should now consider Iran's vastly improved position vis-à-vis its U.S.-occupied neighbor.

Not only did Washington knock off Tehran's arch-foe, Saddam Hussein, as well as the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, but, with this week's completion of a new constitution that would guarantee a weak central government and substantial autonomy to much of the Shi'ite south, it also appears that Iran's influence in Iraq – already on the rise after last spring's inauguration of a pro-Iranian interim government – is set to grow further.

"The new constitution will strengthen the hand of the provincial forces in the South, which are pro-Iranian," according to University of Michigan Iraq expert Juan Cole, who notes that the state structure authorized by the draft charter would amount more to a confederation than a federal system.

Moreover, Cole told IPS, the constitutional ban on any law that contravenes Islamic law will likely give Shi'ite clerics significant power over the state, moving Iraq much closer to the Iranian model.

"While there's no clerical dictator at the head of government as in Iran, if you had five ayatollahs on the Supreme Court who were striking down laws because they contravened Islam, that's pretty close to the Iranian system," he said.

In a recent colloquium for The Nation magazine, Shibley Telhami, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution, noted that, "No one in Washington would have imagined that with all the human and financial costs of the war, the United States would find itself supporting a government … [with] close ties to Iran and that would conclude a military agreement with Tehran for the training of Iraq forces, even as nearly 140,000 U.S. troops remained on Iraq soil."

This indeed was not how it was supposed to turn out for neoconservatives, who had argued that the gratitude of Iraqis for their "liberation" from Saddam would result in the installation of a secular, pro-Western government that would permit its territory to be used for U.S. military bases as yet another pressure point – or possible launching pad – against an increasingly beleaguered and unpopular Islamic Republic (and Syria, too) next door.

When U.S. troops, however, were not in fact greeted in Iraq with the "flowers and sweets" that they predicted, and an unexpected Sunni insurgency began to seriously challenge the occupation, neoconservatives were unfazed.

By empowering the majority Shi'ites through elections, they argued, the United States would create a democratic model that would prove irresistible for the increasingly disillusioned Iranian masses who – with political and possibly paramilitary support from the United States – would rise up and overthrow the theocracy.

"Such a government supported by Iraq's Shi'ite establishment is a dagger aimed at Tehran's clerical dictatorship," argued the neoconservatives' top Iran expert, Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute, in a Wall Street Journal column last December before the Jan. 30 elections brought to power the Jaafari government.

But while Gerecht was confidently predicting that a Shia government in Baghdad and Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf would ring the death knell of the mullahs in Tehran, other analysts saw an altogether different scenario.

"The real long-term geopolitical winner of the 'War on Terror' could be Iran," concluded a September 2004 report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Britain's most influential foreign policy think tank.

"The Iranians have so much control over what happens in Iraq," one of the authors, Gareth Stansfield, told USA Today at the time. "The United States is only beginning to realize this."

Contrary to Gerecht's predictions, that influence, if not control, has only strengthened since the January elections, which were won by the Shi'ite coalition headed by Ibrahim's Da'wa party and, most especially, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In addition to getting the most votes in the federal election, it swept nine out of the 11 provinces, including Baghdad province, where there are substantial Shi'ite populations.

"In 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini created [SCIRI], whose members included Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the current SCIRI leader, and al-Jaafari, Iraq's current prime minister," Cole told The Nation's colloquium. "Khomeini dreamed of putting them in power in Baghdad. Bush and [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld have fulfilled that dream."

Since coming to power, these officials broke entirely with the frosty relationship with Iran carried out by the government of transitional prime minister Iyad Allawi, and initiated what could only be described as warm, if not, fraternal relations with the Islamic Republic.

Accords were struck between the two countries covering military aid and cooperation, major infrastructure projects, including the construction of an oil pipeline that will send Iraqi oil to Iran for refining and an airport in the holy city of Najaf for Iranian pilgrims, and other aid programs, including schools, medical clinics, and mosques.

Last month's three-day visit by Jaafari to Tehran, where he was warmly received by Iran's top leaders, including its new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was capped by a reverential pilgrimage to the tomb of Khomeini himself in a gesture that could not have been interpreted as a good sign, even by Gerecht and other neoconservatives

"It was a love-fest," according to Cole.

And, as noted by a senior U.S. diplomat in the Wall Street Journal last week, the recent audience with Sistani granted to Iran's outgoing foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, "didn't exactly please us," particularly because the ayatollah, widely considered the single most influential leader in Iraq today, has refused to meet with any U.S. official since the invasion.

Meanwhile, Iranian intelligence is reported to have so thoroughly penetrated Iraq's security forces and militias – many of whose members were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard – that the U.S. military has restricted its own intelligence-sharing practices with its Iraqi charges, according to officials here.

Indeed, as acknowledged by Gerecht himself, many of the Iraqi government's leaders had lived for years, in some cases decades, in Iran and been supported there by the government. Even Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president in the government, was dependent to a great extent on Iranian support during Saddam's reign.

While Cole does not entirely discount Gerecht's thesis that a Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad operating under the influence of Sistani's quietest views of Islam's relationship to the state could eventually act as a counter-model to Tehran and thus undermine support for the clerical regime, the Iranians, who have shown a growing willingness to confront the U.S. since January's elections, can thank the neoconservatives for their good fortune so far.

(Inter Press Service)

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH24Ak02.html

The fuel behind Iran's nuclear drive
By David Isenberg

Much of the argument over the intentions of Iran's nuclear program revolves around a single proposition that goes like this. Given that Iran has huge oil and gas reserves, it has no need for nuclear power for domestic energy needs and thus its nuclear program will be used for nuclear weapons.

Like much so-called conventional wisdom, is this is a highly misleading and debatable cliche?

Certainly, the fact that a state is pursuing a nuclear program per se, even if it is a nuclear proliferator, is not always a cause for alarm for the United States. Earlier this year, the US announced an agreement with India (until recently a target of US sanctions, even under the current US president) to strengthen the utilization of nuclear energy in its energy mix.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of England's parliament said in March 2004 that based on a study it commissioned, "It is clear ... that the arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side."


Some US arguments against Iran "were not supported by an analysis of the facts", the committee added, noting that much of the natural gas flared off by Iran - which US officials say could be harnessed instead of nuclear power - was not recoverable for energy use.

Consider the following points. First, Iran's energy situation today is quite different from the late 1970s, when the shah's regime also pursued nuclear technology, a pursuit that did not seem so alarming to the West at the time.

David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, speaking in November 2004 at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies said:
The first thing - of what we do know, and it's amazing how many Americans seem to skate over this - the first nuclear reactor given to Iran was given by the United States in 1967 - a five-megawatt trigger reactor, research reactor, under the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace Program. Still operated ... The other thing that Americans forget is that in 1974, the shah announced a policy of 23,000 megawatts of nuclear energy in Iraq. The US reaction? [Former US national security adviser and secretary of state] Henry Kissinger beat down the door to be sure that two US constructors, General Electric and Westinghouse, had a preferred position in selling those reactors. We did not say, "it's a stupid idea, why would you want to do that when you are flaring gas and you have immense oil reserves?" We said, "That is very interesting; it's an example of how the Iranian economy is moving and becoming modern." Imagine in Iranian ears how it sounds now when we denigrate that capacity. They remember. We were sellers of nuclear reactors and wanted to be sellers of nuclear reactors to the shah.
Consider that just a year or so prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, the country was producing more than 6 million barrels a day of oil and its domestic consumption was less than 10% of that output. Its annual natural gas production (almost all in the form of associated gas) was roughly about 12 billion cubic meters of which some 9.5 billion cubic meters was exported to the Soviet Union and only 20% was consumed domestically. Iran's population was about 35 million. Meanwhile, Iran had signed a number of nuclear power construction contracts with France and Germany and was negotiating with others for additional ones. The stated objectives of these undertakings were to generate electricity and desalinate water. But according to the pre-revolution politicians there was also always an attempt to explore the nuclear technology for military purposes. But there was no overt opposition to the shah's nuclear ambitions because of friendly relations between Iran and US.

In fact, president Gerald Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a US-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle" - reactors powered by and regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.

The construction of nuclear power plants in Iran has been contemplated for more than 30 years. The shah argued that hydrocarbon resources would be too valuable to burn by the beginning of 21st century and most of Iran's electricity generation must be supplied from nuclear power plants by then.

After the Iran-Iraq war at the end of the 1980s, the need for electricity generation for reconstruction of the war-damaged economy was evident and as the maximum export of hydrocarbon resources was to be achieved for foreign exchange requirements, the attention was focused on rebuilding the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Today, Iran has a population of more than 65 million and most people are choking from air pollution. The country produces some 4 million barrels of oil a day of which about 1.5 million are consumed domestically. Natural gas production has skyrocketed and almost all of it is consumed domestically and the share of natural gas of total energy consumption has more than tripled and a very significant portion of that is used to generate power. Incidentally, utilization of oil or natural gas for power generation, though more benign than coal, is not pollution free.

A recent article in Foreign Policy journal noted:
Iran is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] and has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves. But its energy needs are rising faster than its ability to meet them. Driven by a young population and high oil revenues, Iran's power consumption is growing by around 7% annually, and its capacity must nearly triple over the next 15 years to meet projected demand. Where will the electricity come from? Not from the oil sector. It is retarded by US sanctions, as well as inefficiency, corruption and Iran's institutionalized distrust of Western investors. Since 1995, when the sector was opened to a handful of foreign companies, Iran has added 600,000 barrels per day to its crude production, enough to offset depletion in aging fields, but not enough to boost output, which has stagnated at around 3.7 million barrels per day since the late 1990s. Almost 40% of Iran's crude oil is consumed locally. If this figure were to rise, oil revenues would fall, spelling the end of the strong economic growth the country has enjoyed since 1999. Plugging the gap with natural gas is not possible - yet. Iran's gigantic gas reserves are only just being tapped, so Iran remains a net importer.
Second, as a sovereign nation Iran is entitled to make its own sovereign decisions as to how provide for its own energy needs. Under Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, member states are assured access to the benefits of civilian nuclear energy.

Iran is a resource-rich country and has all the rights to use its resources as it sees fit. Among these resources there are several uranium mines whose energy contents cannot be overlooked. Expecting Iran to disregard this valuable resource is irrational, not to mention that taking away that much energy from the free market is an irresponsible proposition. On the other hand, helping Iran to extract, process and use this resource in a joint operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency could help resolve many political as well as financial problems.

Third, the large oil and gas reserves that Iran possesses do not mean that Iran can use oil and gas at no cost.

It is not well appreciated that Iranian oil production has dropped from a peak of more than 6 million barrels per day in 1974 to about 3.4 barrels per day in 2002. Years of political isolation, recurring war and US sanctions have deprived the oil sector of needed investment. Iran's share of total world oil trade peaked at 17.2% in 1972, then declined to 2.6% in 1980, but has since recouped to roughly 5%. In 2002, earnings from oil and gas made up more than 70% of total government revenues, while taxes made up about 20%. After the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the National Iranian Oil Company launched a reconstruction program to restore damaged fields. Since 1994, production has averaged 3.6 million barrels per day, although this is still roughly half of Iran's 1974 levels. The government hopes that foreign finance and technology will help raise Iran's output to 5.6 million barrels per day by 2010 and 7.3 million barrels per day by 2020.

In fact, the oil and gas that Iran has are almost as expensive as the oil and gas that other countries don't have. To be able to use oil or gas as a feed for an industry (eg power generation), Iran has to develop the resources. Now, once developed and produced, from an economic point of view, oil can be treated as a commodity, which has a value. The monetization of gas is more difficult, but not if you have ready markets around you and also if you can use that gas to boost your oil production capacity. In fact, considering the reality that the majority of Iran's oil and gas reserves are in the south and the country's population centers are in the north, it makes more sense to export the oil and gas in the south (oil from the terminals and gas through pipelines and gas value-add projects) rather than pump it to the north and translate it into electric power.

One example explains the logic of this argument - no one has so far posed the question why Iran actually buys oil from Caspian sources. The simple answer is that it makes economic sense: Caspian crude is closer to Iran's northern refineries and the utilization of Caspian crude in the north frees up oil in the south for export. The only argument that can be used regarding Iran's oil and gas reserves compared to other countries is the fact that Iran has secure domestic supplies as compared to other countries that are importers of oil and gas. However, if Iran as a country manages also to secure its own indigenous supply of nuclear fuel, then the equation changes and it becomes more of an economic evaluation.

With regard to its gas reserves, it bears noting that there are needs for gas in Iran that are much higher priorities than the construction of gas power plants. As academics William Beeman and Thomas Stauffer noted:
First, gas is vitally needed for reinjection into existing oil reservoirs [repressurizing]. This is indispensable for maintaining oil output levels, as well as for increasing overall, long-term recovery of oil. Second, natural gas is needed for growing domestic use, such as in cooking fuel and domestic heating (Iranians typically use kerosene for both), where it can free up oil for more profitable export. New uses such as powering bus and taxi fleets in Iran's smoggy urban areas are also essential for development. Third, natural gas exports - via pipelines to Turkey or in liquefied form to the sub-continent - set an attractive minimum value for any available natural gas. With adequate nuclear power generation, Iran can profit more from selling its gas than using it to generate power. Fourth, the economics of gas production in Iran are almost backwards, certainly counter-intuitive. Much of Iran's gas is "rich" - it contains byproducts, such as liquid-petroleum gas [LPG, better known as propane], which are more valuable than the natural gas from which they are derived. Iran can profit by selling these derivatives, but not if it burns the natural gas to generate power. Furthermore, Iran adheres to OPEC production quotas, which combine oil and natural gas production. Therefore Iran cannot simply increase natural gas for export to make up for what it burns at home.
Finally, there is another important strategic element to consider. Iran derives strategic significance from its status as an oil and gas exporter. This is a status that Iran would like to maintain, and as such any initiative that would maximize Iran's potential for hydrocarbon exports has a strategic value for Iran.

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...25-125818-8044r

Exile group: Iran two years from atom bomb
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
Published August 25, 2005


BRUSSELS -- Iran is "95 percent" on its way toward creating a nuclear bomb and could have its hands on missiles capable of reaching Western Europe within two years, one of the country's leading opposition movements said Thursday.

At a news conference in Brussels, the National Council of Resistance of Iran released new information about a heavy water plant and 40 megawatt reactor in Arak, 150 miles south of the capital Tehran. The political wing of the People's Mujahideen, a guerilla movement listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States, also accused Iran's rulers of attempting to smuggle nuclear material into the Islamic republic.


Under an agreement with Britain, France and Germany last year, Iran pledged to freeze work on its nuclear fuel processing program until a comprehensive trade agreement was reached with the European Union. Earlier this month, the so-called EU-3 offered new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a steady supply of nuclear technologies and fuels if Tehran agreed to permanently halt its nuclear activities. However, the conservative hard-liner rejected the package and the country resumed its attempts to enrich uranium at the Isfahan plant on Aug. 8.

"While the international community has been focused on stopping the clerical regime's fuel cycle involving uranium enrichment, Tehran has been working at full speed to obtain a heavy water reactor in Arak and plutonium as the main element for a nuclear bomb," said Ali Safavi, a member of the NCRI's foreign affairs committee.

Arak was not included in the November 2004 deal with the EU-3 and has not been subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iranian government officials told the Vienna-based body the plant would not be ready until 2014, but the NCRI says this is a "sheer lie" and that Arak was on course to produce 31 pounds of plutonium by 2007 -- enough to make one or two nuclear bombs.

The opposition grouping, which is engaged in a fierce lobbying campaign to get the Mujahideen removed from EU and U.S. blacklists, also revealed details of Tehran's attempts to get its hands on tritium -- a substance that greatly increases the explosive power of a bomb. The IAEA has barred Iran from obtaining the material, but the NCRI claims the clerical regime has set up a front company to smuggle it in from South Korea.

The NCRI has revealed 15 nuclear sites in Iran since 2000 and information gathered by its high-placed "moles" within the regime has been used by intelligence services in Europe and the United States. However, the group's latest allegations appear to be flatly contradicted by a recent IAEA report which found that traces of highly enriched uranium found on centrifuge parts had entered the country on imported equipment from Pakistan and did not result from Iranian enrichment activities.

Safavi accused the IAEA of failing to follow up on nuclear intelligence tip-offs provided by the grouping. He also slammed the EU for trying to do a deal with the mullahs in Tehran and for labeling the Mujahideen a terrorist organization.

"If we want to prevent the world's most dangerous terror sponsor from acquiring the world's most dangerous weapon, we must abandon the policy of appeasement in its totality."

Safavi said that since Ahmadinejad was elected in late June, there had been 30 hangings and 25 people -- including seven minors -- sentenced to death in Iran. "This shows how effective the EU's human rights dialogue has been," he told United Press International.

The NCRI representative also catalogued Tehran's involvement in the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, claiming the hard-line government had spent over $5 billion funding guerillas in the U.S. occupied neighboring state and had 11,000 Iraqi insurgents on its payroll.

The Paris-based opposition grouping wants Iran referred to the United Nations Security Council for breaching IAEA rules. However, it is against any military intervention in the oil-rich republic. "The choice is not between war and appeasement," said Safavi. "There is a third option, which is democratic change by Iranian people themselves."

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...25-105657-8653r

Analysis: Iran's nuclear standoff
By Modher Amin
United Press International
Published August 25, 2005


TEHRAN -- The U.N-set deadline for Iran to refreeze its activities related to nuclear fuel production runs out soon. On Sept. 3, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy agency , the U.N. nuclear watchdog, is to report on the country's atomic program.

But a day after the European Union 3 -- Britain, France and Germany -- announced Tuesday they had called off talks scheduled for Aug. 31 with Iran, the country's new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talked again of proposals that Iran would offer on the nuclear dispute. He said Iran was still willing to continue nuclear negotiations with the EU.


"Our policy is transparent and clear: We are seeking the nation's lawful rights within the framework of international laws and we will defend these rights seriously," he told reporters at the end of parliamentary sessions that have been held since Sunday to debate a vote of confidence to his proposed Cabinet.

The newly appointed chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani -- a conservative former head of state broadcasting -- had also hinted at the so-called innovative approaches and "a set of fresh ideas" meant to resolve the dispute.

Commenting on the cancellation of meeting with Iran, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the decision did not mean "that there will not be any contacts with the Iranians."

A British Foreign Office spokesman noted "there is no basis for negotiations until Iran responds to the IAEA board's last resolution."

The resolution adopted earlier this month urged the country to halt its recently resumed uranium conversion activities -- a process that provides the seed material for enrichment.

Concurrent with the new developments, an independent investigation by some experts affiliated with the IAEA cleared Tehran of any wrongdoing over traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in one of the country's nuclear facilities. The report said the traces of enriched uranium came from contaminated Pakistani equipment, not Iranian activities. The findings are seen by Iranian officials as a vindication of the country's position.

But the United States dismissed the report, saying there were other ways Iran could be building nuclear weapons. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the report did nothing to reduce "unresolved concerns" at Iran's nuclear program.

Iran resumed work on its uranium processing plant in the central city of Isfahan two weeks ago and has indicated it intends to restart its main enrichment facility in Natanz soon. The Islamic republic says it has lost confidence in the negotiations with the EU3 and insists its atomic program is peaceful in nature and in line with the non-proliferation treaty obligations. Therefore, analysts say, it sees no reason why its facilities should be under IAEA lock and key.

Criticizing the European cancellation of the talks, Iran's nuclear spokesman Hussein Musavian said Tuesday Iran would not negotiate with the EU beyond the terms of the Paris-Tehran accord.

"The European proposal is a violation of the Paris agreement and their unwillingness to negotiate shows that Europe wants the talks to go beyond the Paris pact and the Tehran declaration which Iran will not accept," Mehr News Agency quoted him as saying.

Musavian stressed Iran's decision to resume uranium ore conversion at Isfahan was irreversible.

"We openly informed Europe in Geneva that Iran would reject the EU proposal and restart work at Isfahan if the plan did not include the country's right to enrichment," he said, adding, Iran has kept the Natanz enrichment plant in suspension and is not against holding talks with Europe.

Iranian officials maintain the agreements already reached with the Europeans have called for a voluntary, non-obligatory and non-legal suspension by Iran.

Iran pledged in Paris last year to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities as long as talks with the EU3 were under way.

Earlier this month, the three offered a package of economic, technical and political incentives in exchange for a permanent suspension of Iranian efforts to make its own nuclear fuel. Iran rejected the deal, saying they failed to recognize the Islamic republic's rights under the NPT to make nuclear fuel.

Low-level enriched uranium can be used as fuel for civilian reactors, but the same fuel in highly refined form can be the raw material for atomic bombs.

The EU and the United States suspect Iran of secretly trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran says it wants nuclear technology only to generate electricity.

"The objective guarantees were basically meant to assure that Iran's activities in mastering a complete nuclear fuel cycle would not be diverted to a nuclear weapons program," Mousavian said. "The Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility is not at all related to nuclear weapons production but Iran is ready to negotiate on objective guarantees concerning Natanz."

Commenting Wednesday, the English-language daily Iran News referred to Iran's nuclear program as "a source of immense national pride for the Iranian government and people" whose "dismantling as the West has been calling for is out of the question."

"From strategic point of view, the Islamic republic has already made the decision to develop its nuclear industry at all cost," said the daily in an editorial.

It further referred to Tehran's nuclear program as "one of the absolutely unbreachable red lines of the system" that should be recognized by the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations, the IAEA and the broader international community.

The editorial also recommended the Iranian negotiating team to "refrain from extremist actions which could scuttle the chances of a negotiated settlement, provided the West -- and in particular the U.S. -- reverses course in its policy of threats and accusations." The paper optimistically said in conclusion that an "amicable solution is still within reach but not before Washington drops its belligerent policy of threatening Iran with Security Council referral, punitive sanctions, airstrikes, etc."

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/12476980.htm

Iran covers all its bets in neighboring Iraq

BY WARREN P. STROBEL

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When rival Shiite Muslim factions battled in Iraqi cities this week in a worrisome new turn for the country's stability, neighboring Iran had little to lose: It supports both factions.

Iran has shrewdly pursued a strategy of "portfolio diversification" in Iraq. It backs a wide range of actors - even competing ones _with support, money and weapons to ensure that it has a say in Iraq's future, Western officials and analysts said.

"They are like lobbyists. They're spreading the money around, so whoever wins owes them," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and expert on Shiite Islam who's criticized U.S. policy in Iraq.

Iran's maneuverings in Iraq have taken on new urgency amid last-minute wrangling over a draft constitution and the Bush administration's charges that Tehran is fueling the anti-American insurgency with cross-border weapons shipments.

Those charges remain unproved, U.S. officials conceded, and are disputed by outside experts. They question why Iran's Shiite clerics would aid insurgents from the rival Sunni branch of Islam who are seeking to regain the power in Iraq they'd wielded under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

But Iran has spread its largesse far and wide, the officials and analysts said, in pursuing three main goals in Iraq: promoting Shiite political dominance, keeping the United States off-balance and avoiding all-out sectarian civil war on its western border.

So far, it's achieved all three.

"I think the Iranians feel that they are basically winning in Iraq. They feel things are basically going their way," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress.

Iran has maintained ties to secular Shiite leaders such as Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the exile group Iraqi National Congress, and to religious groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

It's also reached out gingerly to firebrand nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to the analysts and a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of Iran's involvement in Iraq is being debated within the American government and involves classified data.

Al-Sadr's supporters battled with forces from SCIRI's military wing, the Badr Organization, Wednesday in the holy city of Najaf and other cities. The fight was part of an apparent turf war between the Shiite militias.

"Iran has built ties with an array of diverse and at times competing political forces - Shiite Islamist parties, of course, but also Kurdish parties and violent groups," according to a March report by the nonprofit International Crisis Group.

"In so doing, Tehran can maintain a degree of influence regardless of political developments and help steer those developments in less hostile directions," the report said.

It quoted European diplomats as saying Iran has provided al-Sadr, whose forces led an April 2004 rebellion against U.S. troops, with money and arms. But Iran remains wary of the unpredictable cleric, it said.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went further, accusing Iran of allowing weapons to be smuggled across its border into Iraq for use against American troops.

"It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq," Rumsfeld said at the time.

His remarks followed the seizure of a cache of sophisticated explosive devices in northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border. The devices use "shaped charges," which channel the power of an explosion and are used to destroy tanks and other armored vehicles.

American military forces report seeing a sharp rise in attacks using the more sophisticated weapons in the last few months.

While the shipment clearly came via Iran, who sent it and where it was headed remain in doubt, the senior U.S. official said.

"There's no quick jumping to conclusions that this stuff is Iranian, and even if it is Iranian, that (it) suggests complicity up and down the Iranian government," the official said. "People are looking at this in a vigorous way."

Wayne White, a former Middle East intelligence analyst at the State Department, said, "I cannot explain at all" the shipment. "If you were gun-running to your own people, you would never use that (northern) route," he said, referring to the fact that Iran's Shiite brethren are strongest in southern Iraq.

Cole, the University of Michigan professor, said the idea that Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni insurgents was "completely implausible."

One possibility is that the weapons were smuggled by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is a client of Iran, helped al-Qaida build the shaped-charge bomb that damaged the destroyer USS Cole and has allied itself with Sunni groups occasionally to attack U.S. targets, analysts said.

Or, they said, with power in Iran spread among competing institutions, it could be a freelance operation.

---

© 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH27Ak01.html


Iran thrives on the neo-con dream
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Anyone who still believes that the US neo-conservatives who led the drive to war in Iraq are diabolically clever, geostrategic masterminds should now consider Iran's vastly improved position vis-a-vis its US-occupied neighbor.

Not only did Washington knock off Tehran's arch-foe, Saddam Hussein, as well as the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, but, with the near completion of a new constitution that is likely to guarantee a weak central government and substantial autonomy to much of the Shi'ite south, it also appears that Iran's influence in Iraq - already on the rise after last spring's inauguration of a pro-Iranian interim government - is set to grow further.

"The new constitution will strengthen the hand of the provincial forces in the south, which are pro-Iranian," according to University of Michigan Iraq expert Juan Cole, who notes that the state structure authorized by the draft charter would amount more to a



confederation than a federal system.

Moreover, Cole told Inter Press Service, the constitutional ban on any law that contravenes Islamic law will likely give Shi'ite clerics significant power over the state, moving Iraq much closer to the Iranian model.

"While there's no clerical dictator at the head of government as in Iran, if you had five ayatollahs on the Supreme Court who were striking down laws because they contravened Islam, that's pretty close to the Iranian system," he said.

In a recent colloquium for The Nation magazine, Shibley Telhami, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution, noted, "No one in Washington would have imagined that with all the human and financial costs of the war, the United States would find itself supporting a government ... [with] close ties to Iran and that would conclude a military agreement with Tehran for the training of Iraq forces, even as nearly 140,000 US troops remained on Iraq soil."

This, indeed, was not how it was supposed to turn out for neo-conservatives who had argued that the gratitude of Iraqis for their "liberation" from Saddam would result in the installation of a secular, pro-Western government that would permit its territory to be used for US military bases as yet another pressure point - or possible launching pad - against an increasingly beleaguered and unpopular Islamic republic (and Syria, too) next door.

When US troops, however, were not in fact greeted in Iraq with the "flowers and sweets" that they predicted, and an unexpected Sunni insurgency began to seriously challenge the occupation, neo-conservatives were unfazed.

By empowering the majority Shi'ites through elections, they argued, the US would create a democratic model that would prove irresistible for the increasingly disillusioned Iranian masses who - with political and possibly paramilitary support from the US - would rise up and overthrow the theocracy.

"Such a government supported by Iraq's Shi'ite establishment is a dagger aimed at Tehran's clerical dictatorship," argued the neo-conservatives' top Iran expert, Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute, in a Wall Street Journal column in December before the January 30 Iraq elections brought to power the Ibrahim Jaafari government.

But while Gerecht was confidently predicting that a Shi'ite government in Baghdad and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf would ring the death knell of the mullahs in Tehran, other analysts saw an altogether different scenario.

"The real long-term geopolitical winner of the 'war on terror' could be Iran," concluded a September 2004 report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Britain's most influential foreign policy think-tank.

"The Iranians have so much control over what happens in Iraq," one of the authors, Gareth Stansfield, told USA Today then. "The United States is only beginning to realize this."

Contrary to Gerecht's predictions that influence, if not control, has only strengthened since the January elections, which were won by the Shi'ite coalition headed by Jafaari's Da'wa party and, most especially, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In addition to getting the most votes in the federal election, it swept nine out of the 11 provinces, including Baghdad province, where there are substantial Shi'ite populations.

"In 1982, Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini created [SCIRI], whose members included Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the current SCIRI leader and Jaafari, Iraq's current prime minister," Cole told The Nation's colloquium. "Khomeini dreamed of putting them in power in Baghdad. Bush and [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld have fulfilled that dream."

Since coming to power, these officials broke entirely with the frosty relationship with Iran carried out by the government of transitional prime minister Iyad Allawi and initiated what could only be described as warm, if not, fraternal relations with the Islamic republic.

Accords were struck between the two countries covering military aid and cooperation, major infrastructure projects - including the construction of an oil pipeline that will send Iraqi oil to Iran for refining - an airport in the holy city of Najaf for Iranian pilgrims and other aid programs, including schools, medical clinics and mosques.

Last month's three-day visit by Jaafari to Tehran, where he was warmly received by Iran's top leaders, including its new president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, was capped by a reverential pilgrimage to the tomb of Khomeini in a gesture that could not have been interpreted as a good sign, even by Gerecht and other neo-conservatives.

"It was a love-fest," according to Cole.

And, as noted by a senior US diplomat in the Wall Street Journal last week, the recent audience with Sistani granted to Iran's outgoing foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, "didn't exactly please us", particularly because the ayatollah, widely considered the single-most influential leader in Iraq today, has refused to meet with any US official since the invasion.

Meanwhile, Iranian intelligence is reported to have so thoroughly penetrated Iraq's security forces and militias - many of whose members were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard - that the US military has restricted its own intelligence-sharing practices with its Iraqi charges, according to officials here.

Indeed, as acknowledged by Gerecht, many Iraqi government leaders had lived for years, in some cases decades, in Iran and been supported there by the government. Even Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president in the government, was dependent to a great extent on Iranian support during Saddam's reign.

While Cole does not entirely discount Gerecht's thesis that a Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad, operating under the influence of Sistani's quietest views of Islam's relationship to the state, could eventually act as a counter-model to Tehran and thus undermine support for the clerical regime, he doesn't rule out that the Iranians, who have shown a growing willingness to confront the US since January's elections, have the neo-conservatives to thank for their good fortune so far.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/arti...hp?storyid=3494

Senior Iran cleric hails “Islamic state of Iraq” Fri. 26 Aug 2005

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 26 – A senior Iranian cleric welcomed on Friday the establishment of an Islamic republic in Iraq and hailed the country’s new constitution as one based on “Islamic precepts”.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the powerful ultra-conservative Guardian Council, told worshippers in Tehran’s Friday prayers, “Fortunately, after years of effort and expectations in Iraq, an Islamic state has come to power and the constitution has been established on the basis of Islamic precepts”.

“We must congratulate the Iraqi people and authorities for this victory”, he said.

Jannati, who is a top confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that all justice-seeking counties of the world “have no model other than the Islamic revolution in Iran to turn to”.

“Lebanese Hezbollah and the state of Iraq are not the only supporters of the Islamic revolution”, he said.

Referring to the West as Global Arrogance, the hard-line cleric said, “No matter how many stones they throw in our path, they cannot prevent the spread of the Islamic revolution in the world”.

“We are the winners in the nuclear issue, too”, Jannati said. “The way is paved for our progress and we just need to work hard”.

Jannati said the rising oil prices had placed Iran on a sound financial footing. “We still have problems, but less than before”.

In comments directed against other factions within the clerical regime, Jannati called on the new hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “purge executives who have been within our system, but who have been opposing our system and abusing people’s rights”.

“These executives must be purged as soon as possible”, the powerful cleric said.

Iran rejects negotiations with Europe San Jose Mercury News
Iran on Sunday rejected what it termed conditional negotiations with Europe over Tehran's nuclear program and said it wanted instead to have talks with the UN's international nuclear watchdog agency.
Iran touts new nuclear initiative Xinhua
Neither side has the edge in Iran nuclear standoff Middle East North Africa Financial Network
Daily Star - Lebanon - Sify - Khaleej Times - Financial Express.bd - all 431 related »

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/internat...ast/05iran.html


Iran Rejects an Ultimatum From Europe

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: September 5, 2005
TEHRAN, Sept. 4 - Iran on Sunday rejected a call by Europe to halt its nuclear program in two weeks or face possible Security Council penalties, and said it would not give in to what it called bullying.

The head of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, Ali Larijani, who is also the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told state television that the increasing pressure on Tehran to freeze its program to make nuclear fuel amounted to "bullying" and warned that taking Tehran before the Security Council would be a mistake.

Britain, Germany and France, which represent Europe in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, urged Iran on Saturday to suspend its activities at a nuclear site near Isfahan before Sept. 19, when the United Nations nuclear agency's board of governors will meet.

Iran resumed conversion activities at the site on Aug. 8 to protest a proposal by the three European countries, which asked Iran to stop making nuclear fuel. The technology could provide Iran with the ability to make nuclear bombs.

Tehran has been under mounting pressure since Friday when Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of International Atomic Energy Agency, submitted a report in which he outlined several concerns, including Iran's failure to cooperate with the agency over its nuclear material after more than two years of work with the agency.

In separate comments, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza Assefi, said Sunday that Dr. ElBaradei's report lacked "coherence and integrity."

"The time when they could get us to hold back from our rights by threatening us is over," Mr. Assefi said at his weekly news conference.

Iran's new conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is expected to address a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month, has said he will announce his proposal then to end the deadlock over Iran's nuclear program.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI07Ak05.html


ElBaradei's report deconstructed
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Two years ago, Mohammad ElBaradei, the chief of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), repeatedly insisted that Iran should sign the intrusive, but voluntary, Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)[1] .

Now he has gone on record as stating that Iran must comply with other measures "well beyond the Additional Protocol". Clearly, the sky is the limit and the IAEA has been pressured to make unreasonable demands on Iran well beyond the purview of its agreements with that country.

The European Union - three of whose countries, Britain, France and Germany (EU-3) are negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program - on Saturday pressed Iran to halt its resumed conversion activities before September 19, the date when the IAEA will hold its Board of Governors' meeting.

Europe's ultimatum came soon after ElBaradei submitted a comprehensive report on Tehran's nuclear program, which


criticized Iran for failing to keep its suspension on uranium-enrichment activities and defined Tehran's cooperation with the agency on its nuclear issue as "overdue".

In his report of September 3, ElBaradei, after a restatement of his previous reports on Iran listing the areas of cooperation and non-cooperation, demanded that Iran's "transparency measures should extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol and include access to individuals, documentation related to procurement, dual-use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development locations".(Item 50).

This raises a curious question: can Iran, short of giving up all its military secrets and revealing sensitive military information to the West via the IAEA, ever appease the IAEA and its increasingly demanding chief? Probably not, at least not as long as Western pressure to dispatch Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council is on.

All eyes are now set on the September 19 meeting, and in light of ElBaradei's report that Iran had failed to heed the IAEA's request to suspend its resumption of uranium conversion activities in Isfahan, there is a great likelihood that the IAEA will follow the EU-US's guide to action by complaining against Iran to the Security Council with a view to having sanctions instituted against Tehran.

However, Russia said on Monday that it opposed sending Iran's case to the Security Council, potentially putting itself on a collision course with the US as Moscow holds a veto in the council.

While it remains to be seen if the express train to the Security Council can be somehow slowed by the combined pressure from countries of the Non-Aligned Movement that are members of the IAEA Governing Board and Washington's preoccupation with the natural disaster caused by hurricane Katrina, currently a critical evaluation of ElBaradei's report, to gauge the strength of case against Iran, is called for.

Titled "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran", the IAEA chief's report cites "good progress" in Iran's "corrective measures" since October 2003 (Item 43), resulting in the IAEA's verification of certain aspects of Iran's declarations, particularly on the "outstanding issue" of the sources of contamination of Iran's equipment with HEU (highly enriched uranium), which turns out be none other than Pakistan (Item 12).

The report reiterates the earlier finding, in November 2004, that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material has not been diverted to prohibited activities". (Item 51).

Furthermore, the report cites several Iranian "transparency measures" even beyond the Additional Protocol, such as allowing inspection access to Iran's military bases (Item 37), and Iran's submission of comprehensive declarations with respect to its nuclear facilities, including design information (Item 5). It states that other than a tardiness in providing the latter, "No additional failures have been identified."(Item 8).

Interestingly, the report makes a passing reference to the Subsidiary Agreement between Iran and the IAEA, and yet somehow overlooks that in light of Iran's entry into this agreement in the 1990s, Iran was under no legal obligation to report some of its activities nowadays branded as "breaches of obligation".

The fact that the IAEA chief overlooks such a delicate and yet significant matter casts a long shadow on his credibility as fair and objective. It is important to see the nuance here, to distinguish between "clandestine" and "illegal" in light of the so-called "loopholes" in Iran's Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA whereby Iran was entitled to withhold information to the IAEA for a specified period prior to the introduction of nuclear material at its facilities. Western media are awash with oversight of this important distinction, and yet one naturally expects a little more nuanced understanding from the IAEA chief.

On the other hand, the report makes clear that Iran's uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz remained suspended, that the converted uranium had been relocated to safe storages, and that UF6, ie, uranium hexafluoride, the feed material that flows through the centrifuges in the enrichment process, "remained under agency seals".(Item 59) This, in turn, raises the question: what is the ground for the present Western panic about Iran as long as Iran has not abrogated its agreement with its European counterparts for maintaining a suspension of centrifuges?

After all, as long as Natanz remains shut down, there is actually little to worry about uranium conversion operations in Isfahan, which serve as the initial phases in the nuclear fuel cycle, and which have been under full IAEA monitoring since 2000. The bottom line, contrary to the hue and cry of the Europeans, is that the Paris Agreement is still alive and has not been breached by Iran, except incrementally and benignly, hardly warranting the panic reactions it has solicited in Europe and the US. Under the Paris Agreement of November 2004, Tehran agreed to voluntarily suspend nuclear work under a deal with the EU-3.

Again, Western media are partly to blame. A case in point: reports from both Reuters and the New York Times on ElBaradei's latest report make outlandish claims that the report says Iran's nuclear program is "shrouded in mystery", when, in fact, a glance at the report clearly shows not only the absence of such an adjective, but also plenty of ammunition to think otherwise, that is, a pattern of greater and greater transparency culminating in putting to rest key anxieties of the IAEA about the nature of Iran's nuclear program.

Of course, ElBaradei slams Iran for "lack of full transparency", but then again, Iran is not alone and per his own admission, dozens of IAEA member states are similarly guilty of lack of full cooperation, including Brazil and South Korea, a point aptly made to ElBaradei by a reformist Iranian parliamentarian two years ago in a letter to the IAEA.

The nub of the problem with the IAEA is, per ElBaradei's own admission, that "the agency's legal authority to pursue the verification of possible nuclear weapons-related activity is limited".(Item 49). This is a built-in, structural problem of the non-proliferation regime transcending Iran applied to Iran specifically, and unreasonably so, giving rise to the question: how in the world can the IAEA ever give Iran's nuclear program a clean bill of health. That is, confirming the absence of a nuclear-weapons program, short of inspecting every inch of the country, as was demanded of Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion?

By setting the bar so high, the IAEA opens a Pandora's Box of "Iran exceptionalism", following the logic of diminishing returns whereby the more Iran cooperates, the less satisfied the IAEA becomes due to its limitless demands not set by its own parameters (enshrined in the Additional Protocol).

On a related note, the IAEA's own findings about Iran's bargains with Pakistani nuclear blackmarketeers, such as turning down offers of nuclear-weapons drawings and parts in the 1980s, simply reinforce the Iranian position that it is not interested in acquiring nuclear weapons.

Similarly, with regard to Iran's experiment with plutonium separation there is a dispute as to when exactly these experiments occurred - early or mid-1990s, and a final answer is awaiting further lab analysis. Yet no one at the IAEA is even suggesting that Iran has continued this experiment into the 21st century, this while admitting that Iran's explanation of the time discrepancy, that the plutonium found in a bottle in 1995 had been "purified" as a result of experiments, is "plausible".

ElBaradei's report repeatedly states that in light of Iran's steady cooperation and increasing transparency, resolving the outstanding concerns cited above, Iran's nuclear issue "would be followed up as matters of routine safeguards"(Item 6), hardly the signpost to a nuclear crisis requiring an emergency gathering at the Security Council mandated to deal with clear and present dangers of war and potential conflict, let alone invoking Chapter VII and imposing sanctions on Iran - for what, failure to comply with a confidence-building and "legally-non-binding" request of the IAEA? Clearly, the legal ground for Security Council action is pretty thin, if not lacking.

The excesses and various flaws of ElBaradei's report and management of Iran's nuclear issue cited above may in the end come to haunt the IAEA in view of Iran's past threat to exit the NPT treaty if its case is referred to the Security Council.

That would spell doom for the troubled non-proliferation regime and, instead of full transparency, ElBaradei may find Iran back in the "black hole" of information it was prior to 2003, whereas a prudent approach would build on the present cooperation and avoid excess demands not justified by the IAEA's framework. For the moment, however, a necessary corrective to the IAEA's excesses may be none other than an Iranian declaration that from now on no more measures beyond the Additional Protocol will be even contemplated, let alone implemented.

Lest we forget, President George W Bush in his speech at the National Defense University on February 11, 2004 stated, "I propose that by next year, only states that have signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to import equipment for their civil nuclear programs." Given the fact that ElBaradei's report confirms that Iran has been implementing the Additional Protocol as if it had been ratified, and the Bush administration's stated support for the latest European initiative toward Iran, promising nuclear cooperation with Iran, one wonders why the White House is reluctant to take the next logical step and promise concrete steps with regards to existing Iran sanctions that prevent such cooperation with Iran by foreign companies (if and when the issue of objective guarantee is somehow settled)?

Concerning the latter, various experts, such as David Albright, a former IAEA nuclear inspector, have maintained that it is possible to verify Iran's enrichment process. In a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Albright writes: "As long as safeguards are in place, the IAEA would know if such an increase in enrichment level occurs."

Even French President Jacques Chirac in his June meeting with Iran's then top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, consented to exploring an IAEA-led option of ascertaining the issue of objective guarantee, albeit fleetingly as Chirac and his foreign minister were subsequently forced to retract their statements because of external pressure, principally by London.

In conclusion, with reports of European disarray over Iran, and clear signs of growing division between Great Britain on the one hand and France and Germany on the other, the roadmap to the Security Council is paved with confused intentions and no amount of diplomatic facade at unity can hide the core problem of an illogical, paranoid resistance toward the option of a monitored, contained enrichment process in Iran. This resistance may be melting in some quarters in Europe, but it is simultaneously hardened by a determined US effort to stop Iran's nuclear program one way or another.

Note
[1] The Additional Protocol substantially expands the IAEA's ability to check for clandestine nuclear facilities by providing the agency with authority to visit any facility - declared or not - to investigate questions about or inconsistencies in a state's nuclear declarations.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-authored "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume X11, issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI07Ak06.html


THE ROVING EYE
Iran knocks Europe out
By Pepe Escobar

TEHRAN - In the high-stakes nuclear poker game between Iran and the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), Tehran has decided to call the EU's bluff and turn the game around.

On top of it Ali Larijani, the new head of the Supreme National Security Council - appointed by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad - and now Iran's top nuclear negotiator, stressed on Iranian TV that the criticism expressed in Saturday's report by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohammad ElBaradei was "neither legal nor technical" and distorted by political motives. ("The nuclear issue is a national issue. They [a reference to the EU-3, not the IAEA] should not talk to Iranian people with bullying language.")

Larijani once again stressed that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran had the right to develop the nuclear fuel cycle for civilian purposes. Right on cue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi added that "access to



peaceful nuclear technology is our inalienable right and we will not forsake such a right. The Isfahan issue is irrevocable." This a reference to uranium conversion being resumed at the Isfahan plant. According to Larijani, "If the IAEA was seeking to resolve Iran's nuclear issue, it could have already done so by now."

Putin to the rescue?
The European view appears to be that Iran now is trying to split the international community by talking to other players like Italy, as well as members of the Non-Aligned Movement , such as India, Malaysia and South Africa. The fact is the international community is already split on the issue between the US and the EU-3 on one side, and most of the developing world on the other. As much as the EU-3 is accusing Iran of playing the 35 member countries of the IAEA Board of Governors against each other, the US is exercising tremendous pressure over these same countries to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions.

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, currently a key advisor on foreign affairs to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is quoted as saying that Iran now has the upper hand - and that's the consensus in Tehran. Velayati is a realist. If Iran is referred to the Security Council, "They will obviously set a deadline for Iran, and in the worst circumstances we would have to expect sanctions." Velayati thinks that both Russia and China may not veto the move for sanctions, "but they will try to moderate the Security Council's stances".

There are insistent rumors in diplomatic circles in Tehran that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has asked his close friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to intervene as the new broker of last resort - since the failure of the EU-3 strategy is now being widely acknowledged. Italy from the start wanted to be part of the negotiating team. Berlusconi believes that only Putin can bridge the gap between Western Europe and Iran as he is - relatively - trusted by both sides.

Russia said on Monday that it opposed sending Iran's case to the Security Council.

The showdown is when the 35-member IAEA board meets on September 19 in its headquarters in Vienna. The US and the EU-3 know that both Russia and China - with multiple billion-dollar deals with Iran - would be inclined to block any eventual Security Council sanctions. Diplomats in Brussels realistically realize that sanctions would not be considered at first: the council instead would try hard to come up with a long-term "constructive" solution.

Deal? What deal?
The story of the EU-3's mediation is a chronicle of a debacle foretold. In a nutshell, Iran voluntarily agreed under the Paris Agreement of November 2004 to suspend uranium enrichment at Isfahan as part of negotiations with the EU-3. The IAEA itself recognized the move as "a voluntary, non-legally binding, confidence-building measure".

Five months ago, Iran actually proposed to freeze uranium enrichment but to keep a few centrifuges (under severe IAEA inspections). The EU-3 rejected the offer. Why? Because of Washington. From the Bush administration's point of view, Iran has the right to nothing - much less to master parts of the fuel cycle.

Iranian negotiators saw through the EU-3 strategy from the start. They accused the EU-3 of trying to maintain the suspension of uranium enrichment "indefinitely" and at the same time obstructing any significant development in the negotiations. That was exactly the case, because Washington had blocked any possibility of a compromise. Iran has the right to work on a nuclear fuel cycle according to the NPT, and it has the right to keep at least a pilot enrichment program. In Tehran's view, the EU-3, pressured by Washington, was in fact trying to impose no uranium enrichment and no reprocessing.

The EU-3 had nothing to offer except a heavily spun "nuclear, commercial and political package", as it was advertised in Brussels. An iron rule in the package was for Tehran to definitively renounce uranium enrichment. For Tehran, conversion is not enrichment, thus the restart of Isfahan's plant.

The EU-3 package was in fact a very limited - and conditional - one. It offered a guaranteed supply of fuel for Iran's civilian reactors, as long as they were fully supervised by the IAEA; an agreement (but only in principle) for European companies to build a nuclear power station besides the Russian-made Bushehr reactor, but as long as Tehran allowed extremely intrusive IAEA inspections (and even this wouldn't fly if Washington actively blocked it); more trade (including conditional access to the World Trade Organization) and economic cooperation; sales of Airbus planes; and vague support in terms of "security cooperation" on energy matters, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.

Last month in Brussels, some European diplomats, off the record, admitted to Asia Times Online that the package was "an empty box of chocolates". But "there is nothing else we can offer", a diplomat said. "The Americans simply wouldn't let us." The diplomats also confirmed that both France and Germany were absolutely ready for a deal, considering they want to invest heavily in Iran, and want to close oil and gas agreements. The problem was Britain. "We know," said officials in Tehran, barely disguising their smiles.

Tehran was incensed not only by the terms of the package but by the way it was presented - a bureaucratic letter with no official signature by any of the EU-3 foreign ministers. The conditional offers were only on Europe's name, and did not implicate the US. That was the last straw. Iran called the EU-3's bluff and resumed uranium conversion at Isfahan. That led to last Saturday's IAEA report.

The report says many important things. Crucially, ElBaradei acknowledges that Iran is cooperating with the IAEA. And he admits that results of extensive analysis tend to support Iran's official statement about the foreign origin (from Pakistan) of uranium contamination.

ElBaradei also says that Iran has been asked to provide more information regarding its P-2 centrifuge program. He says a final assessment of Iran's plutonium research activities must await the results of more analysis. He says that Iran is building a heavy water research reactor at Arak (planned to start in 2014) and a heavy water production plant at Arak as well. He says Iran's heavy water reactor program will be monitored by the IAEA.

But ElBaradei also criticizes Iran for not reporting to the IAEA all its experiments in uranium enrichment, uranium conversion and plutonium research. He adds, however, that Iran has agreed to provide further supporting information and documentation. He says that after two-and-a-half years of intensive inspections and investigations the IAEA is not yet in a position to clarify some important outstanding issues; and he calls for Iran's "full transparency". In essence: the tone is "let's keep talking", not "let's shut the door".

Courting India
Larijani insists that "we did not stop the talks, they [the EU-3] did. We consider negotiations with every country as useful. We have not hidden anything. They must know that threats would not have any effect on our national will."

Tehran's new global diplomatic thrust is now evident. The strategy insists on Iran's inalienable nuclear rights according to the IAEA charter; stresses a close, respectful cooperation with IAEA inspectors; and actively courts support from non-aligned countries like India, Malaysia and South Africa (that's the spirit of Larijani's high profile visit to India last week). As far as Tehran is concerned, the EU-3 are now history. Unless they table a realistic proposal.

Tehran stresses that both Israel and Pakistan totally ignored the NPT and built their own nuclear weapons, without giving any explanation to the "international community". So why should Iran be punished when it is actually complying with the NPT?

The Isfahan plant will keep working on uranium conversion. And Tehran plans to resume uranium enrichment at Natanz as well. There's nothing the EU-3 can do about it. According to an Iranian diplomat, "The IAEA of course can talk about their 'serious concern' about nuclear activities in Isfahan and Natanz, but they cannot use this legally as a means to refer Iran to the UN Security Council." Or can they?

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

British study says Tehran is at least five - more likely 10-15 - years away from having nukes.

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0907/dailyUpdate.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI09Ak01.html


Shi'ite supremacists emerge from Iran's shadows
From a Special Correspondent

TEHRAN - When mild-mannered former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami lashed out in a post-election sermon at the "powerful organization" behind the "shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness" currently running the country, it became clear that Iran's political establishment is worried by the ideology propelling the government of new hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Khatami's attack coincides with mounting evidence that a radically anti-Bahai [1] and anti-Sunni semi-clandestine society, called the Hojjatieh, is reemerging in the corridors of power in Tehran. The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place, and was banned in 1983 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.

Khomeini objected to the Hojjatieh's rejection of his doctrine of velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and its conviction that chaos must be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the



12th Shi'ite imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.

"Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini's time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression," Khatami was reported as saying at a speech in the conservative northeastern town of Mashhad, the same location chosen by Ahmadinejad to convene the first meeting of his cabinet.

"The shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness now have a powerful organization behind them," he said, in what was interpreted as an indirect reference to the Hojjatieh society.

Khatami's sharp comments followed an outburst by Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini. Tavassoli claimed that the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards had been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad.

Amid talk that the recent election was a silent coup carried out by elements of the hardline Revolutionary Guard after eight years of reformist rule, Western embassies have been scrambling to understand what the Hojjatieh stands for and to what extent the influence of its teachings will be felt in the new government's domestic and foreign policies.

Asia Times Online spoke last week with European and North American diplomats in Tehran who are trying to identify which of the new government's ministers have sympathies with the Hojjatieh or a part in the organization.

After its banning in the 1980s, the Hojjatieh's members faded into the ranks of the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Society (Mo'talife). Reports in the past few years that the society is reviving have stressed that the neo-Hojjatieh are not so much anti-Bahai as "fanning the flames of discord between Shi'ites and Sunnis", according to the August 28, 2002 edition of the Hamshahri daily.

Ahmadinejad himself is said to have sympathies with the Hojjatieh, if he was not a member outright at some point in his career. The Islamic society he belonged to at Alm-u Sanat University where he attended was an extreme traditional and fundamentalist group that contained a large number of students from the provinces and maintained grass-roots links with the Hojjatieh. The society's anti-leftism also chimes with reports that Ahmadinejad was pushing for a takeover of the Soviet Embassy alongside or instead of the US compound in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.

Of the 21 new ministers in Ahmadinejad's cabinet, three are said to have Hojjatieh backgrounds, including Intelligence chief Hojatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, a graduate of the Hojjatieh-founded Haqqani theological school with a long background in the intelligence services. Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a hardline Shi'ite cleric who is said to have issued a fatwa urging all 2 million members of the bassij Islamic militia [2] to vote for Ahmadinejad in the recent presidential elections, is also associated with that university.

The hardline minister of the interior, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, is another Haqqani alumnus with suspected Hojjatieh sympathies. His appointment was greeted with outrage by some Iranian politicians. Tehran member of parliament Emad Afruq was reported by Islamic Republic News Agency on August 24 to have challenged Pourmohammadi's appointment on the basis of his questionable human rights record while at the Ministry of Intelligence: "You must recognize that when someone comes from such a ministry, with this past and the absence of supervisory mechanisms, our reaction is that we shudder with fear in the public arena. And have we not shuddered? Have we not felt insecure in the past?"

A few days after the new cabinet was revealed, a dinner party in North Tehran's exclusive Elahiyeh neighborhood was buzzing with talk of Hojjatieh involvement in the new government. One Iranian working as a political analyst for a Western embassy fingered the controversial Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi as the main reason behind the transformation of an initially anarchist movement that rejected any form of government, especially an Islamic one, into a key actor influencing the policies of the Ahmadinejad administration.

The powerful cleric is said to be Ahmadinejad's marja-e taqlid (object of emulation) and the ultimate proponent of an elite theory of government best summed up in his once saying: "It doesn't matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."

"There is no doubt that Mesbah and the new crew, whether formally Hojjatieh or not, are more attached to core Shi'ite identity and values," said Vali Nast, a professor of Middle East politics at the Department of National Security Affairs. "But an equally important faction, especially in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Council, is simply anti-Ba'athist. These are people who fought in the Iran-Iraq war and that may also be important in deciding attitudes towards Saudi Arabia and Iraq."

At a time of rising Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in the region, and as Iraq increasingly turns into a proxy battleground for its neighbors, it is not surprising that a Shi'ite supremacist government in Tehran, whether related to the Hojjatieh or not, should reemerge.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are battling it out in Iraq as both seek to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis, the majority of whom are Shi'ites. While Iran is believed to have a better intelligence presence in the country and a more organized military capability, Saudis account for a large percentage of the suicide bombers active there.

In an August Newsweek article, former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer quoted a high-level Syrian official telling him that of 1,200 suspected suicide bombers arrested by the Syrians since Iraq was invaded in 2003, 85% have been Saudis. Baer went on to quote Iran's Grand Ayatollah Saanei reacting to the news by describing Wahhabi suicide bombers as "wolves without pity" and saying that "sooner rather than later, Iran will have to put them down".

Saudi Arabia is also reported to be active in Iran, especially in the ethnically Arab, oil-rich south of the country, where it is whispered that Riyadh is offering financial incentives for locals to convert from Shi'ite to Sunni Islam. News of this strategy has reached Qom, the clerical heartland of Iran.

In an April 2004 article, Persian-language Baztab news website that is written by well-connected insiders and read by Iran's political elite, published a piece alleging that the Hojjatieh had adopted a strategy of trying to sharpen domestic tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites through launching a propaganda campaign against the minority religious group inside Iran (Sunnis). The report alleged that some Hojjatieh-aligned publishers have been issuing books in Arabic that are critical of Sunnis. The books have been distributed in Qom, but are fictitiously marked "Published in Beirut" to give them further credibility and mask the fact they are Shi'ite propaganda.

This is a potentially dangerous move with grave foreign policy implications for Iran. Iran's Sunni minorities live in some of the least-developed provinces and are under-represented in parliament, the army and the civil service. Iran's Kurds, who are Sunni, have been rioting in the north, while the ethnic Arab south is another location that has suffered riots and a bombing campaign in the past six months.

But whether the Hojjatieh is being resurrected by its former adherents or is being used as a battering ram by those Iranian politicians opposed to the current government, its reappearance coincides with a Shi'ite resurgence across the region and a new era of conservative factional infighting in Tehran.

"This particular form of mud-slinging that had disappeared a quarter of a century ago - when the secular left accused the religious establishment of having clandestine Hojjatieh affiliations - is gaining currency again in the new battle of Titans: the traditional right-wing versus the revolutionary right-wing clerical establishment - over ideological hegemony in Iran," concluded Mahmoud Sadri, a US-based Iranian academic.

Note
[1] A religion founded in 1863 in Persia and emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind.

[2] Islamic vigilantes loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI10Ak01.html

THE ROVING EYE
Iran takes over Pipelineistan
By Pepe Escobar

TEHRAN - The black chador-clad secretaries behind rows of flat computer monitors at the Petroleum Ministry building in central Tehran are all smiles. Not to mention their bosses. No wonder. According to the ministry's latest estimates in August, Iran will export at least US$60 billion in oil in 2005 - more than $10 billion more than the June estimate. And with oil hovering about $70 a barrel, it could be even more.

Internal turbulence, though, was the norm during the first days of the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. His appointed oil minister, close friend, tea and carper trader and former acting mayor of Tehran, Ali Saeedlou, was rejected at parliamentary hearings, shown nationwide on live TV. Ahmadinejad had pledged to rid the country of what he called "oil mafias" and vowed to better distribute Iran's oil wealth. So he appointed an outsider, Saeedlou - who was revealed to be too much of an outsider: he got his geology degree only in 2003 from one Hartford University,



a virtual, Internet operation.

Saeedlou was expected to "purge" the state-run National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC), the fourth-largest oil company in the world, but somewhat inefficient and riddled with bureaucracy. After Saeedlou's rejection, Ahmadinejad hinted he would be the acting oil minister, only to nominate a caretaker, Karem Vaziri-Hamaneh - a former deputy oil minister, member of the NIOC board and thus an industry insider all over again. Ahmadinejad has up to three months to come up with another name to be ratified by the majlis (parliament).

Get me to an oilfield on time
As far as both oil and gas are concerned, Iran has everything going for it: 13% of the world's total fossil fuel reserves (132 billion barrels of crude oil and gas liquids, 27.4 trillion cubic meters of gas), which makes it the second-largest oil-and-gas rich country in the world and second-largest Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country (OPEC) producer, behind Saudi Arabia.

According to the ministry's own estimates, Iranian oil will last from 70 to a maximum of 86 years, while gas may last longer than 200 years. But internal consumption of oil products and gas is growing at a rate of 5.2% a year. The country is already forced to import refined products. That's one of the key reasons, Tehran argues, for its civilian nuclear program.

If the current trends persist, Iran will be forced to suspend its oil exports before 2020. This stunning paradox is caused by a multitude of factors: lack of investment in the maintenance of oil and gas installations; lack of rebuilding of installations destroyed during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war; years of non-relations with foreign companies; terrible management; and crucially, American sanctions.

Iran is currently producing 4.3 million barrels of oil a day. It used to be 6 million in 1978, immediately before the Islamic revolution. According to OPEC's current quota system, Iran will only reach this level again in 2025. The Petroleum Ministry for its part argues that Iran will be producing 7 million barrels a day by 2015.

To increase production and efficiency, estimates by the Office for Planning at the Petroleum Ministry have projected an annual investment of at least $4 billion until 2012. Where will all this money come from? Ahmadinejad has pledged to favor domestic investors in the oil industry (there are not many, apart from NIOC). But every player in the industry at large knows the key for Iran is to be able to attract much-needed foreign investment.

As far as the optimistic Petroleum Ministry is concerned, "The stage has been set for as much exploration as possible for oil and gas in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea." This means "introduction of exportable onshore and offshore blocs for the discovery of new oil and gas resources through attraction of foreign capital". Global Big Oil just can't wait to get access to the giant Yadavaran and Azadegan oilfields. (Azadegan, with 36 billion barrels of proven reserves, is the largest discovered oilfield in Iran for the past 50 years.)

The axis of oil
Just as top officials from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey were opening the much-hyped, American-supported Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, Iran started to advertise its counterpunch: an oil pipeline between Iran, Iraq and Syria. True, they are substantially different. BTC will carry Caspian Sea crude to Europe, while the Iranian route would initially carry Caspian Sea crude to Asia.

But Iran has a tremendous potential to supply Europe as well - as France's TotalFinaElf, Italy's ENI and Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell know more than anyone. The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline arriving at the Syrian port of Ladicia perfectly fits the bill. Iran thus can swap Caspian Sea crude to be refined in the country and then deliver the final product to the Mediterranean. The killer argument: as far as both Asian and European customers are concerned, the cost of using this pipeline route is way lower than using BTC - something that even American oil industry insiders recognized long ago.

As much as the Bush administration may recoil in horror, regarding this pipeline as an oil version of the axis of evil (or an evil version of the axis of oil), negotiations are ongoing. The pipeline was seriously discussed during Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari's visit to former president Mohammad Khatami. And it was again seriously discussed during Syrian President Bashar Assad's recent visit to the just-elected Ahmadinejad. Iran and Iraq had been negotiating for months the construction of a pipeline between Abadan and Basra, which are practically neighbors. Now they have signed an agreement, and the pipeline is a given.

Iraq will send crude from Basra to be refined in Abadan, and in exchange will get oil derivatives. Iraq's refineries remain in a disastrous state. The country has to import $300 million of oil derivatives a month. Jaafari's government had no problems agreeing to Iran investing in its petrochemical industry. Tehran insists that despite the Iraqi chaos and the avalanche of pipeline sabotage by the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, it is fully committed to revitalizing Iraq's petrochemical industry. An oil swap deal between them is practically inevitable: this way, Iran gets Iraqi crude in Abadan and delivers the same amount to Iraq at its oil terminal on the island of Kharg.

Caspian Pipelineistan
Iran has been swapping oil with Turkmenistan since early 2000 after the Turkmens - against cries of horror from Washington - built a small pipeline to northern Iran. The next inevitable step was to swap with Kazakhstan - negotiations had been going on for years. For this purpose, Iran built a new terminal at the Caspian port of Neka and a new pipeline to Tehran, as well as two new refineries capable of processing 500,000 barrels of Kazakh crude a day.

Pipelineistan's greatest hit in the Caspian, from Iran's point of view, starts in Kazakhstan along the eastern Caspian shore, through Turkmenistan, crossing to eastern Iran, and down to Bandar Abbas. Any official at the Petroleum Ministry or NIOC will recite the same mantra: Iran can get Caspian crude to any market at a fraction of the price of BTC. And there's absolutely nothing the Bush administration can do about it. As Mahmood Khagani, a former Iranian director for Caspian affairs used to say, "The 'golden gate' from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf is now open."

Iran has its eyes set on Asia. It's not only the much-hyped multibillion dollar deal with China. Iran is also extremely active in the South Asian front. Bush administration pressure notwithstanding, Iran, India and Pakistan are starting trilateral negotiations before November on the mammoth $7.2 billion Iran-Indian pipeline. The project could start by April 2006. India is considering three proposed pipelines - from Iran, Qatar and Turkmenistan, but its deal with Iran is a certainty, according to India's Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. Iran, Pakistan and India have to decide whether they launch separate consortiums or a joint consortium. This pipeline should run 1,115 kilometers in Iran, 705 kilometers in Pakistan and 850 kilometers in India.

A clear worry in New Delhi is to make sure that Pakistan will not be able to disrupt the flow of oil from Iran - considering the South Asia neighbors' turbulent and sometimes torrid relationship. India wants the pipeline secured by World Trade Organization rules on freedom of transit.

It's a gas, gas, gas
The pillar of Iran's gas program is the gigantic offshore South Pars field - on the Persian Gulf, 300 kilometers from Bushehr and 580 kilometers from Bandar Abbas - which by itself contains no less than 9% of the world's proven reserves. A substantial part of its production will be exported as liquefied natural gas (LNG), which will convert Iran in one of the world's top exporters of LNG. Tehran wants the Pars Special Econo-Energy Zone, established in 1998, to become "one of the most important industrial energy poles of the Middle East".

Turkey for the moment is the only importer of Iranian gas, according to the International Affairs bureau at the Petroleum Ministry. This is about to change - and radically. Iran's gas exports to Europe - estimated to be 300 billion cubic meters annually - will start most probably in 2009. A gas pipeline to Greece via Turkey is already in construction, but Iran can also use a different route through Bulgaria and Romania. As the need for Iranian gas is more than pressing, the list of Western European buyers is inevitably huge.

Turkey wants to buy gas from Iran and sell it to Europe. But Iran wants to skip the middleman. So the Iranian option is to go through Ukraine. A cooperation agreement has already been signed between Tehran and Kiev. They are now discussing the volume of gas to be exported. A crucial meeting between Iran, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Russia is to be held this month. According to deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs Mohammad-Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Russia's approval of the project will get things going fast. Ukraine has proposed two pipeline routes to Iran: number one is Iran-Armenia-Georgia-Russia-Ukraine-Europe, and number two Iran-Armenia-Georgia-Black Sea-Ukraine-Europe.

Win-win situation
Whatever happens to the Petroleum Ministry as well as NIOC, Iran's energy policy under the Ahmadinejad presidency will remain substantially the same. This means in practice the full support by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - Ahmadinejad's protector and the ultimate decision-maker - to any policies that lead to Iran becoming a big economic power. And this of course implies ample foreign investment in Iran's oil and gas industry.

Geopolitically, as a key energy supplier to China as well as India's major supplier, Iran will be in a more than enviable position. Its political relations with both China and India are excellent. Its trans-Caspian alliance with Russia is iron-clad, as both countries are dead-set, in diplomatic language, not to allow "other great foreign powers" to penetrate the Caspian. And Tehran will do all it takes to position itself, long term, as a key supplier to Western Europe as well. This means a peaceful, non-confrontational solution to the nuclear issue will be in the interest of all players involved. But not necessarily in the interest of Washington.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1A6...4E6D5FC5D54.htm

The Iran trap
By Scott Ritter
Sunday 11 September 2005, 18:06 Makka Time, 15:06 GMT
In the complicated world of international diplomacy surrounding the issue of Iran's nuclear programme, there is but one thing that the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the so-called EU-3 (Germany, France and Great Britain) and Iran can all agree upon.


And that is: Iran has resumed operations of facilities designed to convert uranium into a product usable in enrichment processes. From that point forward consensus on just about anything begins to fall apart.

Iran's resumption of its uranium conversion programme seems to have brought to an end a negotiating process begun in November 2004 between the EU-3 and Iran, at which time Iran agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment-related activities in exchange for the EU-3's agreement to broker a deal that would provide inducements for Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program.

With the EU-3 initiative now dead in the water, it appears that the next logical step in the diplomatic process is for the IAEA to refer the matter to the Security Council, where the US, backed by the EU-3, have threatened to push for economic sanctions. The IAEA board meets in Vienna, Austria on 19 September to discuss this matter.

The EU-3 countries are uniform in their criticism of Iran's diplomatic slap in the face, but in fact neither the EU-3 nor the IAEA have a legal leg to stand on.

Iran, as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), asserts its "inalienable right" under Article IV of the NPT to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes".

Such rights are conditional, however, but Iran strongly believes that it has complied with Articles I and II of the NPT, where it agrees not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, and Article III, where it accepts full safeguards, including on-site inspections.



The only chance the world has of avoiding a second disastrous US military adventure in the Middle East is for the EU-3 to step back from its policy of doing the bidding of the US


Iran has yet to be declared to be in formal breach of any of these obligations, which raises the basic question: What is it the EU-3 wish to accomplish vis-a-vis their diplomatic intervention?

The real purpose of the EU-3 intervention - to prevent the United States from using Iran's nuclear ambition as an excuse for military intervention - is never discussed in public.

The EU-3 would rather continue to participate in fraudulent diplomacy rather than confront the hard truth - that it is the US, and not Iran, that is operating outside international law when it comes to the issue of Iran's nuclear programme.

In doing so, the EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran.

The heart of the EU-3's position regarding Iran's nuclear programme is the matter of nuclear enrichment, which the EU-3 outright oppose. This, of course, is an extension of the American position (as well as that of America's shadow ally, Israel).

Legally, this is an unsupportable position under the NPT, but one which has been pursued based upon two fundamental points.

The first is Iran's history of deception regarding its nuclear programme, in which Iran hid critical aspects of this effort from the international community.



Iran now claims to have come into compliance with its NPT obligations, by having declared the totality of its efforts, something neither the EU-3 and the IAEA, nor the US and Israel can refute factually.



As with Iraq earlier, the United States has embraced a position which requires Iran to prove the negative


Indeed, the recent disclosure by the IAEA that the hard 'evidence' it possessed to sustain the charge that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme (the existence of traces of highly enriched uranium on Iranian centrifuges) was flawed.

The fact that the uranium came from Pakistan, not Iran, has undercut any case the EU-3 might have had in pursuing its confrontational stance with Iran.

In the face of this development, the EU-3 - Britain, Germany and France - need to ask themselves a very fundamental question: What is their true policy objective being pursued vis-a-vis Iran?

The answer appears to be little more than serving as a front for American complaints against the Iranian nuclear programme.



Given this, the EU-3 must next confront the real policy of the US when it comes to Iran - regime change. As was the case with Iraq, Europe has failed to confront the Bush administration's policy of regime change.

Instead, the EU-3 has allowed their seemingly unified European foreign-policy position regarding Iran to be hijacked by a neoconservative cabal in Washington, DC, as a stepping stone to war.

Europe would like to believe that the diplomatic initiative undertaken by the EU-3 last November represents a nominal Plan A, which avoids direct confrontation between the US and Iran through use of the European intermediary.


It is completely irrelevant that Iran has yet to be shown to have a nuclear weapons program (in fact the overwhelming amount of data available points to the exact opposite conclusion)


The EU-3 comfort themselves with the knowledge that any failure of their initiative pushes the world not to the brink of war, but rather toward a Plan B, intervention by the Security Council of the United Nations, which would seek to compel Iran back into line with the threat of economic sanctions.

A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for Plan C, American military intervention.

European diplomats concede that there is little likelihood that the Security Council will impose sanctions on Iran, given the intransigence on the part of Russia and China.

However, they have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency by noting that given the situation in Iraq, and now in the US in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US military is so overstretched that any talk of the Bush administration implementing a Plan C is out of the question.

What the Europeans - and the member nations of the EU-3 in particular - fail to recognise is that the Bush administration's plan for Iran does not consist of three separate plans, but rather one plan composed of three phases leading to the inevitability of armed conflict with Iran and the termination of the theocratic regime of the mullahs currently residing in Tehran.

These three phases - the collapse of the EU-3 intervention leading to a referral of the Iran matter to the Security Council, the inability of the Security Council to agree upon the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran, and the US confronting the Security Council over its alleged inability to protect American national security interests - lead inevitably toward military confrontation.



A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for Plan C, American military intervention


As with Iraq earlier, the US has embraced a position which requires Iran to prove the negative (ie, demonstrate that it does not have a nuclear weapons program) as opposed to the US and the IAEA proving that one does in fact exist.

The criteria put forward by the Bush administration for Iran to comply - no-notice inspections of any site at any time - are an affront to a sovereign nation that has yet to be shown to be in violation of any of its legal obligations.

The fact that the US used a similar programme of no-notice weapons inspections as a front for espionage against Iraq in support of its regime-change policy against Saddam Hussein has not escaped the attention of the Iranians, who have flat-out rejected any such extra-legal requirements on its part.

The US, and to a lesser extent the IAEA and the EU-3, have taken Iran's intransigence as a clear sign that Iran has something to hide.

Once again, as was the case with Iraq, the US has put process over substance, and unless the EU-3 bloc, the American effort to have the Iranian case transferred to the Security Council, the end result will be war.

The Iran trap has been well baited by the Bush administration, so much so that a Europe already burned once by American duplicity regarding Iraq, and a war-weary American public, fail to recognise what is actually transpiring.



The bait for this trap is, of course, diplomacy, first in the form of the EU-3 intervention, and that having failed, in the form of Security Council actions.

Polls taken in April 2005 showed that most Americans (63% to 37%) believed the Bush administration should take military action to stop Iran from developing or trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme.

It is completely irrelevant that Iran has yet to be shown to have a nuclear weapons programme (in fact the overwhelming amount of data available points to the exact opposite conclusion).

Today, in September 2005, many Americans might be loath to immediately embrace a direct path towards war with Iran. However, according to recent polls, most Americans support referring the matter of Iran to the Security Council for the purpose of imposing sanctions.



The EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran


If the Security Council, because of Russian and Chinese opposition, refuses to support sanctions, the American people will be confronted by the Bush administration with the choice to either appear weak before the UN, or to take matters into our own hands (ie, unilateral military action) in the name of national defence.



The outcome in this case is certain - war.

Since the result of any referral of the Iran issue to the Security Council is all but guaranteed, the push by the EU-3 to have the IAEA refer Iran to the Security Council, while rooted in the language of diplomacy, is really nothing less than an act of war.

The only chance the world has of avoiding a second disastrous US military adventure in the Middle East is for the EU-3 to step back from its policy of doing the bidding of the US, and to confront not only Iran on the matter of its nuclear programme, but also the larger issue of American policies of regional transformation that represent the greatest threat to Middle East security and stability today.

Scott Ritter is former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998 Author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, published by IB Tauris (London) and Nation Books (USA) in October 2005.

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1301837_pf.html


washingtonpost.com
U.S. Deploys Slide Show to Press Case Against Iran

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; A07



UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 -- With an hour-long slide show that blends satellite imagery with disquieting assumptions about Iran's nuclear energy program, Bush administration officials have been trying to convince allies that Tehran is on a fast track toward nuclear weapons.

The PowerPoint briefing, titled "A History of Concealment and Deception," has been presented to diplomats from more than a dozen countries. Several diplomats said the presentation, intended to win allies for increasing pressure on the Iranian government, dismisses ambiguities in the evidence about Iran's intentions and omits alternative explanations under debate among intelligence analysts.

The presenters argue that the evidence leads solidly to a conclusion that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing weapons, according to diplomats who have attended the briefings and U.S. officials who helped to assemble the slide show. But even U.S. intelligence estimates acknowledge that other possibilities are plausible, though unverified.

The problem, acknowledged one U.S. official, is that the evidence is not definitive. Briefers "say you can't draw any other conclusion, and of course you can draw other conclusions," said the official, who would discuss the closed-door sessions only on condition of anonymity.

The briefings were conducted in Vienna over the past month in advance of a gathering of world leaders this week at the United Nations. President Bush, who is to address the annual General Assembly gathering Wednesday, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, plan to use the meeting to press for agreement to threaten international sanctions against Iran.

The president's direct involvement marks an escalation of a two-year effort to bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, unless Tehran gives up technology capable of enriching uranium for a bomb. U.S. officials have acknowledged that it has been an uphill campaign, with opposition from key allies who fear a prelude to a military campaign.

Several diplomats said the slide show reminded them of the flawed presentation on Iraq's weapons programs made by then-secretary of state Colin L. Powell to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. "I don't think they'll lose any support, but it isn't going to win anyone either," said one European diplomat who attended the recent briefing and whose country backs the U.S. position on Iran.

Robert G. Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, acknowledged last week that despite European support, the Bush administration has traveled a tough road in persuading others that Iran should face consequences for a nuclear program it built in secret.

"There's a great deal of resistance . . . on the part of many governments who don't seem to place, quite frankly, nonproliferation and Iran, a nuclear-armed Iran, at the top of their priority list," he told a congressional panel last week.

Several influential nations such as India, Russia, China, South Africa and Brazil share U.S. suspicions about Iran's intentions. But they maintain profound differences with the Bush administration over how to respond, and are apprehensive about the goals of a U.S. president who has said "all options are on the table," in dealing with Tehran.

Three years ago, the White House used the same annual gathering to put both Iraq, and the world community on notice. In a toughly-worded speech, delivered six months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush warned that the United States would deal alone, if necessary, with a dictator bent on launching nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community no longer believes Iraq was trying to reconstitute a nuclear program, as the president said. Those and other U.S. intelligence failures have remained fresh in the minds of international decision-makers now being asked to weigh the case of Iran.

The Iraq experience has had a "sobering effect" on Iran discussions, said President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a close ally of the Bush administration. In an interview, he refused to speculate on whether Iran, whose program was secretly aided by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, had been designed for weapons production. But he said he feels confident Iran's aims are now peaceful and there was no need for Security Council action.

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is also attending the U.N. summit,